Why I'm still serving a life sentence

She had spent three years and 81 days in prison, and on the day the convictions were quashed, she stood on the steps of the Court of Appeal and said: ''We are not victorious. There are no winners here. We have all lost out.''

The once confident and happy wife and mother is now, according to those closest to her, a shadow of her former self. It's unsurprising considering the trauma she has been through, which even now, isn't quite over.

Just this week, a leading paediatrician, Professor David Southall, was found guilty of abusing his position by the General Medical Council after he wrongfully accused Sally's husband Steve of murdering his children, based on only evidence from a television documentary. The professor's fate will be decided in August.

Sally, now 39, and Steve, 42, endured the death of their first son, Christopher, at 11 weeks in 1996 and a year later, the loss of two-month-old Harry.

Her third son, 'Tom', whose real name is protected by a court order, was taken away from her in infancy as she awaited trial, to be looked after by his father. Tom is now five and is still getting to know his mother.

For Sally, the life sentence continues because of the deep psychological damage she suffered as a result of her ordeal, says family friend and solicitor John Batt, who has known Sally all her life. He was at her side at her trial and also worked full-time as part of her appeal team.

Sally has said she feels she's never proved her innocence and that some people around her are still suspicious of her, he says. ''Once you've proved that the convictions are unsafe, that's all the Court of Appeal will do. What they don't say is, 'We proclaim Sally Clark to be innocent of any crime'. She keeps saying to me, 'How does anybody know that I didn't do it? Only I know.' She avoids some mothers, but not all of them, and she has made some good friends. Once you get to know her, you get to know that she couldn't have done it.''

Now John has written Sally's story, Stolen Innocence, an account of the life of the policeman's daughter whose world fell apart with the deaths of her two sons and her subsequent conviction of their murders followed by two gruelling appeals.

Some of the book is written by Sally herself, from her prison cell and after her release. But she is still battling to rebuild her life, says John.

''After the appeal, we all breathed the most enormous sigh of relief because we could stand down and get on with our lives and Sally could be the happy mum she was. But it didn't happen.''

He says that bonding with Tom was not easy, initially. ''Every time he needed anything he called for daddy, not for mummy. If he had a cough, Sally didn't know if it was a cough or a deadly disease. She had seen Tom one day a month on her own in prison in a completely artificial environment and twice a month with Steve on family visits in a room with 200 other people.

''The relationship is coming right but it's a slow process and must not be rushed. Tom's been without a mum for the first four years of his life. Nobody knows what damage that will do to a child or what effect that will have when he gets older, when other kids at school find out what his mother was accused of.

''For a couple of months it all seemed OK and then suddenly the nightmares began. Sally would have daytime nightmares, panic attacks and fear of crowds. Quite ordinary things would have her poleaxed. When she goes into Tesco's and sees there are five different brands of baked beans, she goes into a complete panic. How does she know which one to choose? She wound up not being able to go into a supermarket because she was faced with a nightmare of choices.''

John says that Sally is also unable to sit in the front of cars, because she is likely to have a panic attack. ''What happens to your psyche when your two sons die, then you are wrongly convicted of murder and your first appeal fails, then you spend three-and-a-half years with people who want to kill you? For her first six months in prison, she couldn't take a shower without two minders.''

Sally is undergoing psychiatric treatment, but it is going to be a long process, says John. She has said she would like more children, but how practical would that be in reality?

''It doesn't take long to work out what sort of a nightmare they'd be living if she had another baby. If there's a genetic factor at work in cot deaths, they'd never know from one moment to the next whether a new baby was going to survive or not and whether she was going to be charged with murdering it.''

The Clarks have a live-in nanny because Sally doesn't know when a panic attack will hit her. John says she has good days and bad days. ''She's petrified that if anybody finds out what's going on inside her head, they will come to the conclusion that she's mentally so seriously sick that she'll have to be locked up in an asylum. It's totally unrealistic.''

John says the trauma has also affected her relationship with Steve. ''Steve is a wonderful man. He is very deeply in love with Sally and she with him, but their marriage is undergoing the most appalling strains. He has a high-powered job in the City and two or three nights a week, he has to work straight through the night. If Sally becomes sick and the nanny can't cope, he has to drop everything and go home. That can't go on indefinitely.

''But Steve is a man who has an almost unlimited amount of patience and love for his wife and although, at times, it's unbearably difficult for both of them, I think they will stay together and weather this. Eventually they will come out the other side and their marriage will be the stronger for it.''

The Clarks haven't had a chance to grieve for their two sons, John says.

''Sally's way of coping with the death of Christopher is that she wants to talk about him all the time. Steve can't bear it. He's got it locked away in a box which says, 'Don't open'. They each have to come to terms with it and neither of them have got there yet, but I'm sure they will.''

But some good has come out of this terrible miscarriage of justice, he insists. Sally's exoneration had a direct bearing on the subsequent clearing of two other women also accused of killing their babies - Trupti Patel and Angela Cannings. ''There has been a complete sea change in people's attitude towards double cot deaths. Sally did that, nobody else.''

* Stolen Innocence: The Story Of Sally Clark by John Batt (Ebury, £14.99)

l Mike Amos is away